


Gifts Unasked For

by Trobadora



Category: Doctor Who, Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-05
Updated: 2007-07-05
Packaged: 2017-10-06 19:30:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/57023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trobadora/pseuds/Trobadora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>He bumped into Jack again in the year 3 billion something-or-other.</i> - Set some time after <i>Last of the Time Lords</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gifts Unasked For

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [notsobigheaded ficathon](http://community.livejournal.com/notsobigheaded/3975.html).

He bumped into Jack again in the year 3 billion something-or-other - the TARDIS navigation wasn't working quite as it should, and he wasn't certain about the exact date. But there he was, again: Jack, sitting in a bar. Of course.

He stood there for a few moments, just looking. This had to be an earlier version of Jack, not the one from the current timeline - but Jack had always been a time traveller; there was no telling when he might be from. Their timelines were tangled beyond hope; a right mess even a Time Lord had trouble keeping straight in his head.

Jack seemed to be watching one of the patrons chatting up a guy in the corner, an amused expression on his face.

Something was just a little... off about the man, though. What was he up to?

He wasn't flirting with anyone, for one.

The Doctor joined him at the bar, tapped him on the shoulder. Jack turned, giving him a smile. "Hello, Doctor. Long time no see. Well, not this version of you, at any rate."

A curious lack of surprise, there. And Jack's smile was entirely too knowing for his taste. "What are you doing here?" he asked.

"What does it look like?" Jack rolled his eyes - now that was more like it! - and took a sip from his drink.

The words were right, the expressions were right, but there was something going on with Jack that was just... wrong. Wrong beyond his usual wrongness. As if he knew something the Doctor didn't, and wasn't even particularly amused by that fact. _Wrong._

"Jack."

Jack gave him an innocent look, as much as he was capable of such a thing. But there was something in his eyes... something behind his eyes that the Doctor couldn't quite fathom.

He shook his head, clearing his thoughts. "Jack. When are you from?"

He wasn't prepared for the look of utter surprise on Jack's face - the surprise that had been absent at his unexpected appearance -, or the response he got. "This is it, Doctor," he said, "you've caught me in my proper time for once."

He stared. That couldn't be.

"Doc? Are you all right?"

"But..."

"But what?" Jack looked seriously worried now. "You look like someone's just stolen your TARDIS."

Like he was utterly at sea - that's what he was feeling like. _What_ was going on here?

"You can't be," he said finally, "you can't be. The Face of Boe is..."

"The _what?_" Jack interrupted him.

Oh yes, something was very, very wrong here.

There was something very strange about Jack.

He could see Jack thinking in front of him, and then Jack was looking at him with penetrating eyes, intense in a way they'd never been before. He shuddered. A moment later, he could see the light dawning in his friend's - in this stranger's eyes. "You thought... _are you insane_, Doctor? You thought I was the Face of Boe?"

He wasn't? "You said..."

"I told you once, a long time ago, that I'd been called that when I was young. Are you telling me you thought that was going to be my future ever since?" Jack sounded incredulous, but just a bit amused now.

He nodded - what else could he do?

Jack grimaced, an expression that sat curiously uneasily on his face. That was new too. "God, Doctor. Have you lost your _mind_? It was a pun - they called me that after _him_. In case you've forgotten, he's actually a member of an entire _species_. What, did you think they were all me too?"

In the Jack he knew, he'd have known how to take those words. In this man, though - he didn't know this man, even though he knew him better than anyone. He didn't know him at all.

His throat constricted. He'd thought - he'd let himself believe -

"Doctor?" Jack's concern was palpable, even with all the strangeness surrounding him. "Come on, let's get out of here."

Jack led him out of the pub, and they walked, quietly, side by side, for several minutes. His mind was reeling, and he was grateful for the silence - internally, he was busy kicking himself for being so damn stupid. Had he wanted to believe in Jack's mortality so much that he'd ignored all reason? It was a terrible thing, true immortality - and Jack had it, or so it seemed. Looking at the man walking beside him, he could see - he had aged a little, changed a little, but only a very little. He was not completely static - he was alive, after all. But he was a Fact, a fixed point in space and time – how could he have convinced himself... Stupid, Doctor, so stupid.

He could almost feel it now, almost see it when he looked at the man walking beside him. Walking, like an ordinary human being. Like the man he'd once been, young and human and full of life.

If this was really his proper timeline - no matter how much time he might have skipped, one way or another, he must be millions of years old now. A shiver ran down his spine. He was ancient now - he must be impossibly old. Inconceivably old, even for a Time Lord. The Doctor could almost feel all of creation spin around this one fixed point, and he was just a little dizzy from the thought.

Frightening. Terrible.

How could Jack still be himself? Or was his personality unchanging too, also fixed?

No.

He'd seen Jack change - he was not the same. And yet he was; a part of him had remained. Indomitable.

_Jack._

They arrived at Jack's place, and Jack poured him a drink. He kicked it back quickly.

"All right?"

"Yes," he said, quietly. "Sorry." And then again, looking Jack in the eye, facing the inconceivable: "I'm so sorry."

Jack didn't pretend to misunderstand. "Yeah." He shrugged. "It's not that bad, you know. Life. At least I haven't turned into a giant face in a jar." He was smirking.

The Doctor groaned. "I'm never going to hear the end of this, am I?"

"No."

Jack - _oh, Jack._

Still Jack - more than should be possible, really - but what was behind his eyes, behind the mannerisms, behind the easy humour and the flippant remarks that could have fallen just as easily from the lips of the man he left behind on the Game Station, the man he'd last seen in the twenty-first century - what was behind all that, that wasn't _his_ Jack, not any more. So far beyond anything he could imagine. What were a few hundred years compared to millions? It was dizzying, just thinking about it. He swayed.

Jack grasped his shoulder. "Doctor?"

"You really can't die."

"Nope."

"Not ever."

"You knew that."

"Didn't want to know. I'm so sorry," he said again.

"I'm old," Jack said. "You have no idea how old, even though you can count the years. I've seen more than you can imagine. I've done more than you can imagine. I've been bored, and sick of it all, and so, so weary. I've wanted it all to end more times than I can count. I spent millennia trying to find a way. I have more regrets than several entire planets combined. And sometimes I think that if I have to see one more day, just one single day more, I'm going to go completely mad."

The Doctor's hearts broke a little more with each word, but Jack wasn't finished.

"But you know what? It never lasts. I've been so many things, but I always come back to this, because it's good. Life is good. It's _good_, and I'm glad for it, and you have nothing to feel sorry for."

He couldn't turn his eyes away. Jack sounded like he meant it. This ancient man, who was beyond him now, so far beyond him that he could almost feel the infinity of time and space stretching between them even as they were sitting side by side - this ancient man had found his peace with himself. He still took joy from life, and it was good. Jack was good with it all.

"Jack -" he said, his voice breaking. And the old man pulled him into his arms, holding him, tightly -

It would have been intimate, if the distance between them hadn't been so clear. Where Jack was now, the Doctor couldn't follow.

The gap between him and the younger version of this man, the gap that had seemed so wide, so insurmountable once, was insignificant, tiny compared to this.

"Doctor," Jack said. "You're so young. So very young still."

He let out a laugh, but it sounded more like a sob. Young. When everything around him died. When nothing ever lasted. When he lost - -

But Jack had been there and done that, to an extent that he never would, even if he lived far longer than any Time Lord before him. Jack knew. And he was telling him it was all right.

If only he could let himself believe.

He turned his face into Jack's shoulder and let himself be held.

After a while, Jack disentangled himself and grasped the Doctor's shoulders with both hands. He held him still, at arm's length, looking into his eyes. The eternity of time and space looking right into him. "Live, Doctor. Just one day at a time. Take what you can have. Enjoy it. That's all there is to it."

~o~

He was back in the early twenty-first century, once again - why were so many things happening during that time? It was starting to get old. But Jack's words were still resonating in his mind: _Take what you can have._ He wasn't sure he dared.

But he was drawn, inexorably, towards Cardiff again.

When he stepped out of the TARDIS, looking over the Plass, he still wasn't sure he was actually going to do this.

Then he was suddenly surrounded by three people, one of them pointing a gun at him - a gun that definitely didn't belong in this time and place. "What?" he said. He really didn't need that now. "What now?"

"Doctor," one of the women said - a tiny Asian woman with glasses, familiar-looking somehow. Where had he seen her before? And the man, a short, weaselly-looking fellow, added: "Come with us. Don't make a fuss."

Suddenly it all added up: Torchwood. This must be them. He'd looked them up, after all, once he'd known Jack was working with them. He broke out in a blinding grin. "Sure! Just the people I wanted to see. Torchwood, right? Excellent. Take me to your leader!"

The three people exchanged a look and evidently decided not to look a gift Time Lord in the mouth. They shooed him towards a building at the corner and into what looked like a tourist office, through a door, down a lift, and – "Oh, this is nice! Very retro, of course, and a bit Tube station, but nice." He liked the look. And above them - "Is that a pterodactyl? Brilliant!"

They ignored him.

"Jack," one of the women shouted. "We brought you a gift!"

The gun was still trained on him, but when Jack appeared, a slightly stunned expression on his face, he ignored it and stepped towards him. The weaselly-looking man made a move to stop him, but Jack waved him away.

Jack. So young again. Human. Not that ancient creature with millennia upon millennia weighing on his soul. Someone he could still reach. Someone he could still touch.

Someone he still knew.

"Doctor. To what do I owe this pleasure?"

"Can't I visit an old friend?"

"Not you."

It was said with a smile, but he could see it, could see so clearly - this was what Jack knew, this was what he saw. And Jack was right.

Except that he wasn't, of course. Not now.

He swallowed. "Yes, me," he said quietly. "I missed you."

And he had, all through that encounter with Jack's future self - had missed this man so very much, his youth, his humanity, the connection between them. The man who still had so much before him. The one he could still show something to.

Jack did a visible double take. Then, abruptly, he turned around. "Come on."

He followed the man, his friend, the one he'd let down so badly, like so many of his friends before him. They ended up in a back room, and Jack leaned against a wall. The picture of relaxation, when he was obviously anything but. This version of Jack was definitely not at peace with himself.

This version of Jack, he could still reach.

"Out with it now, Doctor. What's going on?"

The Doctor stepped closer. "Just like I said."

Jack rolled his eyes. "Doc, not that I'm not happy to see you. But you don't have to pretend. We both know better than that."

The Doctor stepped closer still. They were almost touching now. "I know. I never had to pretend with you. You never expected anything from me." Except maybe not to be abandoned two hundred thousand years in the future. And even this little, the Doctor had failed to deliver. No wonder he was terrified now. "I'm sorry," he said. "There isn't any reason I'm here, other than to see you. I wasn't planning for quite so dramatic an entrance, mind you - you've got your friends to thank for that. Pretty efficient, that lot, for Torchwood."

Jack snorted. "Thanks." He tilted his head, considering. "What do you want, then?"

The Doctor closed the last remaining distance between them. "This," he said, and he pulled Jack into his arms, holding him closely, so closely. Pressing his face into the crook of Jack's neck. Pressing a kiss against his skin.

Then he was holding still, waiting – waiting for Jack's response, whatever it might be. It could be too late. Jack had wanted him, once, but he'd walked away. They both had walked away.

He'd felt so lonely, so apart – a Time Lord, the last of the Time Lords, eternity running through his veins. How could a human soothe that? How could a human, even an accidentally immortal one, be a match for that?

He'd deluded himself. There were differences much huger than that - he'd stared it in the face. If he was beyond Jack now, it was nothing compared to the gulf that would open between them in time.

Jack would outgrow him, one day, and it was a terrifying thought. And more terrifying than that - had he made that first step already? Or was their connection still there? For one terrible moment, he waited -

But then Jack was kissing him - kissing him for real, and why hadn't they done this before? So good - he felt Jack melt against him, clinging to his body, neither of them letting go, not letting go - -

And life was good.

So very good.


End file.
